A dear friend

As I was driving somewhere yesterday, it occurred to me that perhaps years ago I reached out to others a little more.  I don't know if that is true, but if it is, then I need to start heading back in that direction.

As a newbie to Canal Fulton, I just couldn't get enough of its history.  My son, Greg, was just a baby and I had started writing a column for The Signal as a community service (no pay).  There were old books at the library to read, vestiges of the old town all over, and there were kind old folks to meet too.

While I was researching the old hotel in town, the foundations of which can still be seen across the street from the canoe livery, I found out that two brothers had owned it at the end.  Apparently, they were planning some renovations but the place burned.  It was called the Easley Hotel and famous people like presidents stayed there back in the canal era.  The hotel was large enough that it stretched from Rt. 93 to Market Street where the front doors were.  There are a few old pictures of the place.

The brothers were Ed and Al Nichter.  So way back thenI looked in our Massillon phone book and checked to see if maybe there was someone named Nichter still living in Canal Fulton --- there was -- Howard Nichter.  This was in around 1978 and I was just nosy enough to call him and find out some more about him and maybe his family.  Well, he was related to the brothers who owned the hotel and he told me what he could about that.  To be sure, he was a little guarded at first while we spoke on the phone, but after a while he started getting a little more comfortable.  I could tell because he told me I could call him back anytime.  From his voice I knew he was elderly and he was also endearing and lonely.  I did call him back many times.

It was Howard whose father owned the livery in town, and it was Howard who was called upon to drive the famous Doc Dissinger here and there in a hired buggy when his own horse was tired and worn out.  It was Howard who had the knack of telling a story, including the little known fact of Doc Dissinger's whiny voice.  He made history real for me.  I could visualize a livery, the doctor's office, and a little boy who was getting an adventure.  I could picture Howard in a canoe taking supplies to the folks on the other side of the canal/river after the 1913 flood.

One day Howard finally came to my house to meet me in person.  He brought along some pictures of his deceased wife whom he must have loved very much.  He told me the story of how she wasn't permitted to be buried in the cemetery behind SS Philip & James.  It must have broken his heart because after that he quit going to church.

The librarian I wrote about on Saturday, Miss Elizabeth Bliler, who lived in what is now the bread and breakfast on Rt. 93, was a kind lady.  I went to her house one day to get something, and she mentioned something that rang familiar.  I said innocently enough, "My friend, Howard Nichter, told me about that."

Elizabeth looked incredulous.  "Howard Nichter is your friend?" she asked.

"Well, yes, he is.  We talk on the phone," I explained.

"Well, my dear, you are probably the only person in this town he has ever spoken to in years," she said.  She explained that something had happened years ago that had caused Howard to pull away from the townsfolk.

I was stunned.  He came to my house and sat at my kitchen table, and he was so winded when he made it up a couple of concrete steps that he could hardly breathe.  He was kind and sweet and he stayed just long enough, and then I could tell he needed to go.  But that was fine; I'd just call him on the phone and we'd stay in touch.

One Canal Days weekend in around 1980, I'm not sure, I tried to call Howard and there was no answer.  That wasn't like Howard at all to be out in the evening.  I called again a couple of days later and still no answer.  I was getting quite concerned.

Somehow I found out that Howard had died, and I was very sad about it.  I never got to say goodbye.

Someone told me that a lady who lived on Rt. 93 at that blinker light at the top of the hill had been a friend of Howard's, so I took a chance and called her.  She was actually very nice and happy to hear from me.  She was able to fill in the details of the end of Howard's life.  She told me that she and Howard had become friends and that she had convinced Howard to go to church with her at the Lutheran Church.  She told me that he had called her to say he was being released from the hospital and she was just leaving the house to pick him up at the hospital in Massillon when he collapsed and died in the hallway.  His lungs or his heart must have finally given out.  When she got there, he was already gone.

She said the police had found him during Canal Days weekend at the church cemetery wandering around.  The road was probably closed going into town and it might have confused him.  They took him to the hospital and the staff were treating him for a number of health problems.

But my joy was that Howard had gotten right with God; he had let his bitterness go.  Picking up the phone and calling a complete stranger must not have bothered me too much back then.  My curiosity pushed me and I punched back any fears.  Maybe that call started a flicker of something in Howard that allowed him to reach out to his new friend.

Is it just youth or something else that accounts for such behavior?

Howard, his brother Raymond who died of a ruptured appendix at 12, and his parents are all buried behind SS Philip & James Cemetery.  He once asked me if I knew the name of some flowers that grew by the side of the road that he had seen.  They were purple he said.  I never could figure it out.